UK Poverty 2026: The essential guide to understanding poverty in the UK
This report sets out the nature of poverty in the UK, and evaluates changes under the last Conservative-led Government.
It also sets out the scale of action necessary for the current Government to deliver the change it has promised.
Today, we’ve launched our annual state of the nation report, UK Poverty 2026. The report, which accounts for the time just before the current government took power and clearly shows the depth of the problem and the scale of the challenge.
Some of the key findings of the report include:
- More than one in five people in the UK, around 14.2 million, were living in poverty.
Britain’s poorest are getting poorer: 6.8 million people are now living in very deep poverty, almost half of everyone in poverty, the highest level on record. - Poverty has hardened, not eased: the average person in poverty now lives 29% below the poverty line, compared with 23% in the mid-1990s.
- Child poverty has climbed again: 4.5 million children are in poverty, rising for the third year in a row.
- Hunger is spreading fast: 1.1 million more people in poverty cannot afford enough food than two years ago bringing the total to 3.5 million, while 2.8 million more people overall are now food insecure bringing the total to 7.5 million.
- Work doesn’t guarantee security: around two-thirds of working-age adults in poverty, 5.4 million people, live in households where someone is in work.
- New JRF analysis shows that, under central Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) projections, the headline poverty rate will remain broadly unchanged (21.3% to 21.1%) between 2026 and 2029.
- Current policies will see little progress towards meeting the government’s manifesto commitment to end the mass dependence on food banks.
People in very deep poverty now make up the biggest group of people in poverty, at 6.8 million people.
This is unacceptable for the fifth richest country in the world, and it has consequences.
Overall poverty rates have flatlined since 2005/06 at just over a fifth. The longer a family spends in poverty, the worse the effects on that family.
The longer we tolerate unacceptably high levels of poverty, the worse it is for our country.
THE TIME FOR ACTION IS NOW.
We found that Britain’s poorest people are getting poorer. And poverty is hardening, not easing.
- Almost 1/2 of all people in poverty in very deep poverty
- More than 1/4 disabled people living in poverty
- Around 2/3 of working-age adults in poverty live in a household where someone is in work
Feelings of frustration – and the need for urgent action – were evident
The lives behind the numbers — unacceptably tough, and getting harder
With a foreward from our Grassroots Poverty Action Group (GPAG), this report speaks to some of the policies that would lift hundreds of thousands of children, disabled people and other families out of poverty.
It can be done, and it has been done before. The alternative is a reality that feels harder to thrive in.